prelude.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I open them and all is born again - Sylvia Plath
Dishes rot in the sink. Clothes hang as limp as dried jellyfish. July comes around a second time and I still can’t bring myself to get up. Get out. How does the saying go? Time heals all wounds, like a fist, like a knife carving away diseased tissue. I learnt to craft, and weave the strands of fate into a hangman’s noose. I learnt to pray, and fear finding grief in faith. What I am trying to say is this: I have loved my sadness for so long I don’t know who I am without it. We are hurtling around the sun so fast I am dizzy with the changing seasons. Terracotta. Shifting sands. The earth beneath my fingers giving way to green and the hummingbird of summer flits through the air.
I have tried to be a ghost; my lungs do not forget to breathe.
The past six months, I sat in silence — still as a silhouette. Lights turned off, fuse blown out. I watched the day’s rise point out my lack of a sunny disposition, caught the cracks in my life creaking, creaking, creaking. Plaster peeled like skin. December came and went. Like any ordinary idiot, I confused hell with he’ll, my fingers having narrowly avoided the unravelling of telomeres. Strange how true colours never shine in the midst of winter.
It’s a cool summer, unlike the burning mugginess of the previous. Rain pours down sporadically. Cherries and apples sour in retaliation, and I envy them for their precocious beauty. On the bus yesterday, I did not wonder how many bones the wheels will crush — I noticed houses blooming with carnations instead. The pavement bursts with the wildflowers of youth. There are falcons spreading their wings outside my window. Their ubiquitous cries. The sun trickles gently in. What I am trying to say is: I want to remind myself I do not exist to die.